Pulp Mill Legislation Raises No Conflict

Published: June 25, 1996

To the Editor:

A June 18 news article on my bill to extend an Alaskan pulp mill's contract for cutting timber from Tongass National Forest confuses representing one's constituents with the mystical "appearance" of a conflict of interest.

My legislation would extend for 15 years a contract to the sole surviving pulp mill in southeast Alaska so the mill could have some assurance of wood to justify the investment to keep operating. Extending the contract is intended only to keep some 4,000 Alaskans working; it will have no impact on the environment.

A contract extension also will permit the pulp mill to pioneer a chlorine-free production process. And the mill has no other source of timber since there is no state or private timber in the region.

The contract extension is not coming at the the forest's expense. More than 60 percent of the forest's old-growth has been protected from harvest, leaving only 10 percent potentially open to timber development.

I have owned stock in two Alaska banks since it was given to me when my father died in 1952. I have declared those investments publicly since I have been in the Senate. I held the stock when I voted in 1990 for the Tongass Timber Reform Act, which took a million additional acres out of the timber base and ended a $40 million subsidy to the timber industry. If there was a conflict of interest, it existed then.

From the standpoint of personal gain, I could have invested my holdings outside Alaska and generated higher appreciation in blue-chip stocks, but I believe that one of the best ways to represent my constituents is to participate in my state's economy.

There is no conflict of interest here since by this legislation I am trying to save the third-largest element of southeast Alaska's economy.